Women’s Rights in the WorkplaceA weekly conversation about workplace discrimination and the state of labor and employment law with Women’s Rights in the Workplace lawyer Jack Tuckner and his guests.

Starting to think about your New Years Resolutions? Perhaps one’s about getting a better job in 2015? Are you tired of being told to feel grateful just to have any old job in this economy? Then you must listen to our interview with the “Exec Whisperer,” Kelley A. Joyce, career coach, CEO and founder of The Truth at Work, who provides inspiring answers and solutions for making 2015 your best work year ever! What kind of work were you put on this planet to do?

Answer: Only if you work in one of the 20 states that require it, in the other 30 states your employer can starve you! Join Jack Tuckner and Deborah O’Rell as they answer frequently asked employment law questions in their first of two shows related to your workplace rights.

Join Jack Tuckner and Deborah O’Rell as they explore current sexual harassment cases in the news. They discuss what’s needed to file an actual sexual harassment case, and what you can do to protect yourself from unwelcome sexual harassment at work, and what to do about it when it happens to you.

Tipped workers occupy a vulnerable position in our nation’s employment scene, as federal law allows for pay discrimination between tipped and non-tipped workers, permitting employers to pay tipped workers a sub-minimum wage of $2.13 per hour (that’s not a typo). As a result, tipped restaurant workers are expected to collect the remainder of their wages from customers’ tips, creating an environment in which a majority female workforce must please and curry favor with customers to earn a living. Depending on customers’ tips for wages discourages women who might otherwise stand up for their rights and report unwanted sexual behaviors.

Join Jack Tuckner and Deborah O'Rell as they discuss the plight of tipped workers in the notoriously sexist restaurant industry. Earlier this month, Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROCUnited.org), released a report, The Glass Floor, Sexual Harassment in the Restaurant Industry, based on extensive interviews with 700 former and current restaurant workers in New York and other major cities which concluded that more than 90 percent of female restaurant workers experienced sexual harassment, with more than half reporting incidents on a weekly basis. Although the restaurant industry employs only 7 % of American women, the sector is responsible for 37 % of sexual harassment claims filed with the E.E.O.C., and the tipped women workers in states requiring only the $2.13 per hour reported that they were three times more likely to be told by management to wear “sexier” more revealing clothing than they were in states where the same minimum wage was paid to all workers. Conversely, tipped women workers in states that have eliminated the sub-minimum wage were less likely to experience sexual harassment. Learn what to do about sexual harassment on the job when it happens to you.

Domestic violence has long been categorized as a women’s issue that the occasional “good man” gets involved with, and probably only because he was forced into it. To make matters worse, popular culture diminishes the seriousness of the problem. If 1 in 4 women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime, and 1 in 3 women experience intimate partner violence on college campuses, how is it we haven’t declared on war on domestic violence yet? How did we get to this woeful place where 1.3 million women are victims of physical assault by an intimate partner each year, and how do we create a cultural shift in how domestic violence is perceived? Domestic violence will not stop until we engage men and youth in the conversation.

Join women’s workplace rights advocates Jack Tuckner and Deborah O’Rell as they are joined by their special guests Quentin Walcott and Sara Gonzalez. Quentin is an anti-violence activist and educator, and as a Co-Executive Director of CONNECT he has spent years transforming the distorted perception of bystanders, male youth, and even batterers about the seriousness of this crime. Sara is the Community Educator at Day One where she works with youth to address intimate partner violence and issues of consent, and she also provides trainings for adults who work with youth, so that they’re better prepared to deal with the issue of Teen Dating Violence. It is critical that men, mothers, brothers, sisters and friends unite to effect meaningful change to the culture of violence against women. Listen the their incisive, warm and authentic voices as they describe the massive value they add to addressing the root causes of domestic violence.

Join Jack and Deborah as they interview Amanda Norejko, Esq., the Director of the Matrimonial and Economic Justice Project at the Center for Battered Women’s Legal Services at Sanctuary for Families, New York’s largest nonprofit agency exclusively dedicated to serving the clinical, economic, legal, and shelter needs of victims of gender-based violence and their children. Ms. Norejko is an attorney who has represented victims of domestic violence and sex trafficking in family law and matrimonial matters in New York City for more than a dozen years. She engages in legislative and policy advocacy aimed at combating violence against women and promoting women’s economic empowerment on the local, state, national, and international level.Ms. Norejko is one of NY’s leading experts and practitioners in the laws protecting victims of DV and human trafficking, and she provides a wealth of practical information for anyone needing to know what steps to take in order to break the cycle of power and control at the heart of intimate partner violence and human trafficking.

Do you know your rights as a pregnant employee? The US Supreme Court took the bench on the first day of its new term today, where they’ll soon decide an important pregnancy discrimination case that will determine whether pregnant employees are entitled to flexibility of their job functions--known as reasonable accommodation—during their physically challenging pregnancies. Join Women’s Rights in the Workplace advocates Jack Tuckner and Deborah O’Rell for an empowering and lively discussion as they discuss and analyse the fundamental rights of pregnant working women under federal and state laws. Know your rights, take action, and whatever else you do, don’t quit!

Elder Abuse: “a single, or
repeated act, or lack of appropriate action, occurring within any relationship
where there is an expectation of trust, which causes harm or distress to an
older person,” in other words, doing
bad, nasty and cruel things to vulnerable old folk.

And as there
are almost 2.5 million reported cases of elder abuse in the US each year, 91%
of nursing homes lack adequate staffing to properly care for patients, and
67.3% of the victims are female, this dismal reality should be of serious
concern to all PRN.fm listeners. Join Jack & Deborah as they spend a little
quality time with Ron Katter, Esq., a successful Plaintiff’s attorney and
accomplished litigator, who prosecutes elder abuse cases on behalf of injured
seniors and their families.Ron explains
common examples of elder abuse, the symptoms and signs to look out for in your
own family member, what the law provides, and what proactive and protective actions you can
take to prevent it or stop it. Don’t miss it.

Private and
public trade and labor unions may be battered and on the ropes in
our new post-Citizens United gilded age, but one municipal union’s
still kicking butt and taking names for its rank and file members.
Join women’s rights in the workplace advocates Jack Tuckner and
Deborah O’Rell as they visit with Robert Cassar, President of CWA
Local 1182, the labor union representing 3,000 traffic and
sanitation enforcement agents in NYC. Hear how Robert has fought
for and won numerous important bargaining concessions from the
City, including substantially enhancing the status, safety and pay
for his hardworking brother and sister members (who perform a
thankless, difficult and dangerous job) through his staunch
advocacy and activism for more than 20 years, the longest serving
President in the history of the local.

Celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act with women’s rights advocates Jack Tuckner and Deborah O’Rell, as they discuss the history and purpose of VAWA, the great good it has accomplished so far (with no thanks to the Republicans in Congress and on the Supreme Court who have blocked and gutted the law meant to protect and support survivors of domestic violence), and as they field a thoughtful call from a listener who ties it into the serious DV problems plaguing (and playing out openly in) the National Football League.